Without Warning

by Joanne Fox Phillips

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by River Grove Books

  Austin, TX

  www.rivergrovebooks.com

  Copyright ©2017 Joanne Fox Phillips

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the copyright holder.

  Distributed by River Grove Books

  Design and composition by Greenleaf Book Group and Debbie Berne

  Cover design by Greenleaf Book Group and Debbie Berne

  Images Copyright © Geo Martinez, Taigi, Agata Dorobek, 2016.

  Used under license from Shutterstock.com

  Dedication photo by Bilah Sperling

  Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.

  Print ISBN: 978-1-63299-139-3

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-63299-140-9

  First Edition

  To all the sisters,

  particularly this one—Dr. Marcella Fox

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One: Saturday Morning

  Chapter Two: Saturday Afternoon

  Chapter Three: Sunday

  Chapter Four: Monday Morning

  Chapter Five: Monday Night

  Chapter Six: Tuesday Morning

  Chapter Seven: Tuesday Afternoon

  Chapter Eight: Tuesday Night

  Chapter Nine: Wednesday Morning

  Chapter Ten: Wednesday Afternoon

  Chapter Eleven: Wednesday Afternoon

  Chapter Twelve: Wednesday Night

  Chapter Thirteen: Wednesday Night, late

  Chapter Fourteen: Thursday Morning

  Chapter Fifteen: Thursday Afternoon

  Chapter Sixteen: Friday Morning

  Chapter Seventeen: Friday Afternoon

  Chapter Eighteen: Saturday Morning

  Chapter Ninteen: Sunday Morning

  Chapter Twenty: Sunday Night

  Chapter Twenty-One: Monday Morning

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Monday Evening

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Tuesday

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Wednesday Morning

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Wednesday Evening

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Thursday Morning

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Later

  About the Author

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The author wishes to acknowledge the invaluable assistance provided by her wonderful friends and relatives: Tom DeLorbe, Jill Stauffer, Janet Guest, Marianne Gibbons, Jackie Cain, Marian McCarthy, Edith Coen, Maria Vavuris, Vicki Vavuris Renard, Melinda Droege, Michelle Minton, and Chris Thomas. A special thanks to Clayton Phillips, who used his delightful wit to help out his mom with a few scenes.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Saturday Morning

  The church on Balboa is a quaint, white steepled building that would look more appropriate in the rolling hills of a New England pasture than it does here in the crowded blocks of the Richmond District. It looks almost exactly the same as it did the last time I was here, except for the Vietnamese notices on the message boards. The Irish, Greeks, and Italians of my parents’ generation have been replaced, it seems. The church dates back to the 1920s and has been a haven for many an immigrant family over the years, my own included.

  As the cab that dropped me off from the airport drives away, I look westward toward the ocean and wonder whether it would be better just to make a run for it. In fifteen minutes, I could be at the Cliff House sipping coffee and watching the surf. I am a practical person, and my idea to fly across the country for a twenty-minute conversation with a priest seems ridiculous to me now. There are plenty of Catholic churches in Houston. I could have very easily gone into any one of them and taken care of business. Note to self: Never make travel plans on the third glass of wine.

  I have three sisters who live within a few blocks of where I’m standing. I haven’t told any of them about my plan to come to San Francisco, and now I regret the decision. Still, what would I say? What explanation would I give them for flying out to California for a single day?

  I could tell my family the truth—that I came out to go to confession in a familiar church. I wouldn’t have to tell them what I was confessing: that I stole over half a million dollars and brought down the seventh-largest private company in the United States. I wouldn’t have to tell them that I framed a coworker for hacking into the company computers. I wouldn’t have to tell them that I forged personnel documents so I could get a better job title on my resume.

  And I certainly wouldn’t have to tell them that the fabulous Wyeth painting hanging above my fireplace was purloined from my current employer without CoGenCo ever even knowing it was missing.

  The piercing siren of a patrol car on the chase interrupts my internal conversation, and I instinctively run inside for sanctuary. I scoot into a back pew to survey the situation. St. Geronimo’s Catholic Church hasn’t changed much in thirty years. A bank of red candles flicker in one corner under a large statue of St. Joseph and another under a similarly sized statue of the Blessed Mother on the other side.

  There is one piece I look for but don’t see. One of our neighbors, Mrs. Vavuris, had donated a mosaic icon of Mary with child in gratitude for having her four sons return from World War II unharmed. It was a beautiful piece and something I had always admired, even as a kid. The artist, unknown at the time of its commission, had become famous over the years, and I would estimate the icon’s value to be well into six figures by now. I’m disappointed that the piece is no longer on display; I was hoping to get a glimpse.

  The confession area has three compartments, the outer two for sinners and the one in between for the priest. There are two lights outside the confessionals. The red light indicates that the room closest to me is occupied, but the green light on the other advertises a vacancy. I oblige, part the heavy velvet curtain, and kneel on a well-worn Naugahyde kneeler.

  I’m taken aback by the familiarity of the tiny room, the smell in particular. It’s an ancient and dangerous smell. Wax, varnish, lingering incense, and old lady perfume from hundreds—no, probably thousands—of Saturdays and holy days of obligation, mixed with the musty scent of the nervous and guilty waiting on this side of the screen.

  I pass the time by running my finger along a crucifix embedded in the ornately carved grill and try to remember my last time here. It had to have been sometime during my senior year of high school, before I headed across the Bay to UC Berkeley and shed all things Catholic.

  I became more agnostic over the years, although the prayers of my childhood still surface during moments of crisis: a quick prayer to St. Anthony when I lose an earring or a Hail Mary when afraid, said more out of habit than conviction. But breaking tradition from my devout Catholic family was something I never formally announced. To have done so would have been considered not only rude but a rallying cry for some sort of intervention. There would have been calls from my older sister Honey, a Catholic nun, pleading with me to think of how my mother must feel to know she had raised a heretic—a thorn in any Catholic mother’s heart.

  Honey is fourteen years older than I. She entered the convent when I was four, so we were never close sisters. She is the oldest of the O’Leary girls and the hands-down favorite of both my parents. I don’t remember her in her secular state, but family legend tells of a stunning
teenager, starlet material, who shunned numerous suitors to devote her life to Christ. It was known as a calling, a whisper in the ear from God himself, doled out only to a chosen few.

  “She could have been anything,” my father would say. “She sacrificed her life,” my mother told us frequently. Yes, Honey was a saint. I was not. So my lapse remained private and unspoken.

  And now I have another unspoken ethical lapse to deal with. I consider my situation. Based upon my twelve years of parochial schooling, I know two critical facts about confessions: First, confidentiality is guaranteed. Priests will rot in jail or face a firing squad before revealing pertinent facts regarding a confession. Second, they cannot compel penitents to turn themselves in to the authorities. This is a lesser-known fact, but it makes perfect sense given the number of Mafia and cartel members who routinely partake in the sacrament. Given what I have to confess, I appreciate both of these facts equally.

  I continue to wait my turn, listening to the sound of muffled voices coming through from the other booths. I rehearse the confession again and again until I become bored with the monotony. I consider taking out my iPhone, but a quick game of Candy Crush in a confessional may not be proper. The many Sister Mary So-and-Sos of my youth always instructed me to use moments like this to reflect upon my sins or offer up the discomfort to the souls in purgatory. I remember having to explain the concept of purgatory to my WASP ex-husband. I always explained it as a waiting room for those not quite good enough to be admitted directly to Heaven. Suffering, either by the actual soul in purgatory or a surrogate, works as a purification process to move one closer to the pearly gates. So for Catholics, suffering in silence is not only considered a virtue but has the added purpose of springing anonymous masses from oblivion. The concept is genius: The church convinces the oppressed not to complain or instigate change. Accept your fate; offer it up to souls in purgatory, and someday some parochial school kid will do the same thing for you.

  Once again, as I continue to wait, I think about abandoning this now seemingly idiotic plan. Given my ambivalence about the Catholic Church, will forgiveness administered by some priest really matter to me? What do I even want to get out of this? I’m not worried about purgatory or an uncomfortable conversation with St. Peter someday. Am I remorseful? Not exactly. It’s more that I’m upset by who I’ve become than by what I did, if that makes any sense.

  I was at rock bottom when I took that job in Tulsa. The steep fall from Houston high society had taken its toll on me in the form of a low bank balance and size fourteen pants. Engineering the theft and then using the proceeds—well, most of it, anyway—for a scholarship fund provided me with a sense of greater purpose. The effect was short-lived. Back in Houston, again I felt inferior. Despite a fresh face and slimmed-down physique, I still wasn’t happy. So I tried stealing, just for the hell of it. There were no victims. No one even knew they had been stolen from. It was my private victory. My inside joke. Again, I got away with it, but the thrill proved to be fleeting. Simply put, I am lost. Unfulfilled.

  So I had to find a way to deal with that. I tried booze but found I lacked the necessary stamina for a life in the gutter. And as any alum of a strict Catholic upbringing can tell you, traditions run deep. Don’t get me started on the Catholic Church. I don’t believe in the doctrine. I’m not even sure if I believe in God. I am, however, willing to double down on the possibility that my life will improve if I can somehow get back to the original self I left so long ago in this very neighborhood. This very church.

  As a kid, I was forced to go to confession on First Fridays with all my classmates from St. Geronimo’s. It was to be a perfunctory exercise, and I’d never considered how transformative it might be for adults. Confession is the Catholic Church’s version of affordable therapy, expensive travel costs notwithstanding. I’m willing to take a chance that forgiveness from a priest will provide, if nothing else, a drink of water along the trail to my becoming a better person.

  My internal conversation is interrupted by the scrape of the screen sliding open, and I stare at the translucent light behind the grille. I stiffen up in a panic, trying to remember words that were in my head only minutes before. But I take a breath, and the prayer returns.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” I begin. “It has been …” I pause for a moment and count in my head, “thirty-seven years since my last confession.”

  I cringe, waiting for some sort of pastoral reprimand, but nothing is said. I wait some more.

  “I took some money,” I say finally. “Lots of money.”

  “Can you return it?”

  “No. I gave most of it away.”

  “What about the rest?”

  “I got a facelift, and I joined a country club. Neither is refundable.”

  “I see.”

  “I also stole a painting.”

  I pause, but the priest says nothing.

  “I don’t know why I did this, Father. I got a divorce, and—” I catch myself. Theft, vanity, divorce; how many more mortal sins will I be detailing here? “It’s complicated, Father,” I continue. “Maybe I was just going through a phase.”

  “A phase.”

  “Yes.” I take a breath. “I went to school here at St. Geronimo’s. I used to not have anything to confess. I had to make up sins on First Fridays. So I stopped going to church, because I didn’t think I needed to.” I pause. “Is that a sin too?” I whisper.

  “Do you think it is?”

  “Well, not compared to the other things.” I start to feel uneasy. “But if you need to throw in a few extra Hail Marys, I’ll understand.”

  “Will you?” he asks, his voice serious.

  “Look, Father—” I stop, immediately regretting my raised voice. I pride myself in my ability to hide my emotions, but sitting in this confessional has transported me back to my earlier self: the free spirit who said anything that came into her brain, never worrying about how it would be perceived on the other end.

  People are different in San Francisco. They value the spontaneous and genuine, and they relish original thought. But the farther east one travels, the more what’s valued shifts to the predictable and unemotional, until pretty soon, most conversations could be scripted. Sometime in the last thirty-five years, all emotional spontaneity was sucked out of me, and I morphed into an executive’s wife, a country-club maven. And then I became a calculating criminal. Yes, I have been going through a phase. I don’t know who I am anymore.

  The priest waits silently as I start to snivel, then cry, then sob. Finally the words come out.

  “Listen, Father,” I stutter. “My name is Tanzie Lewis. Well, Tanzie O’Leary back then. I live in Houston now, and I flew out here just for this confession, and now—now I don’t know if I can finish it.”

  With that, the floodgates open. Big snotty tears full of mascara drip off my nose and cheeks as I cradle my head in my hands.

  “Tanzie O’Leary?” asks the priest.

  “Uh huh,” I say, sobbing.

  “I’m Spiro Cosmo. I grew up next door to you.”

  “Oh my God!” I scream. “Spiro Cosmo?! You’re a priest?”

  I cover my mouth; surely there are little old ladies sitting in the pews now distracted from their devotionals, looking at the confessional and wondering what is going on in here. But it’s a legitimate shock. I’d never expected to see our childhood neighbor Spiro ever again, much less through the screen of a confessional.

  My mother was forever fixing my sisters and me up with Spiro when we were teenagers, hoping for a Greek son-in-law. A proxenio, as it’s called in Greek. Blondie, Lucy, and I had other ideas though, and so did Spiro, apparently. He was a perennial fixture in our house of girls, but we never felt much attraction. Spiro was a buddy; a co-conspirator. Most notably, Spiro was my sister Blondie’s intended escort to her senior prom back in 1972. When she failed to skinny down to her size six dress, she manufactured an injury and left Spiro dateless for the event. Still, it didn’t seem to b
other him much; instead, he spent the night working on a 1958 VW Bug (complete with a wooden bumper) he’d souped up with some high-performance engine he’d bought on the cheap. Having a car in San Francisco was something of a novelty, and clearly Spiro enjoyed racing around the city more than he enjoyed the prospect of being the serious squeeze of one of the infamous O’Leary girls. Maybe we weren’t as charming as we thought, or maybe Spiro just didn’t like girls. None of that matters now, I suppose.

  I search through my purse and come up with a gently used tissue, which I flatten out on the prayer rail and use to wipe my face and nose. “I thought this was supposed to be anonymous?” I whisper.

  “You are supposed to be anonymous,” Spiro says. “My name is posted on the sign in the vestibule. You told me your name.”

  I snivel and think. This is not going at all as I expected.

  “Do you want to get a drink?” I ask finally. It seems awkward and inappropriate, but this doesn’t feel like confession anymore—it’s more like a high school reunion.

  “It’s ten in the morning,” he says. “That’s a little early for me.”

  “Oh, I forgot. I’m on Texas time.” Now he thinks I drink at lunch.

  “Tanzie, I would love to catch up,” he says, “but I’m afraid I’m tied up here until noon. So we should probably stick with your confession, and then maybe we can get together later. Will that work?”

  “Oh, of course. I’m sorry. I’m taking too much time. I know others are waiting.” Just after I say this, I remember that my flight home is around 2:00 p.m., but I decide not to bring this up. It sounds ungrateful.

  “You’re fine,” he says. “Take as long as you need.”

  “It’s a long list, Spiro—I mean, Father Cosmo.” The title seems sort of silly now that I know we spent our childhoods together. “Maybe I should just send you an email. Do they allow that sort of thing now?”

  Spiro laughed. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

  Oh yes I have, I think to myself.

  “Regarding your sins,” he says. “The details are not important. I don’t need to hear about them—unless, of course, you need to get all of this completely out of your system.”